A note in the Origin Terms of Service outlines conditions that may provoke Electronic Arts to delete user accounts from their fledgling online service, as the section on "Content and Entitlement Availability" reserves their right to delete accounts that have been inactive for 24 months. This caught the eye of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and they have inquiries in to EA asking whether it is correct to think this means it will be possible to lose access to achievements, DLC, or even games as a result of this, but this has not yet inspired a response. Here's the wording of the clause in question:

Entitlements may only be held in Accounts belonging to legal residents of countries where access to and use of Content and Entitlements is permitted. Entitlements may be purchased or acquired only from EA or an authorized retailer. EA reserves the right to refuse your request(s) to acquire Entitlements, and EA reserves the right to limit or block any request to acquire Entitlements for any reason.

We do not guarantee that any Content or Entitlement will be available at all times or at any given time or that we will continue to offer particular Content or Entitlements for any particular length of time. We reserve the right to change and update Content and Entitlements without notice to you. If you have not used your Entitlements or Account for twenty four (24) months or more and your Account has associated Entitlements, your Entitlements will expire and your Account may be cancelled for non-use. Once you have redeemed your Entitlements, that content is not returnable, exchangeable, or refundable for other Entitlements or for cash, or other goods or services.

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^Drag0n^ wrote on Aug 3, 2011, 18:59:It almost hurts to say this, but consoles are looking like the only way you can ""own" your copy of the game nowadays.

That's certainly not the case. You can get banned and stuff taken away on consoles too. In fact here's a hilarious page that where people lie and beg and try to get unbanned from xbox bans (its copied from official xbox forum) http://whywasibanned.com/Or with PS3 lose access to stuff you bought for months when the online services went down, they took a bunch of games with them since some of them had extra DRM layered on top that made you login to PSN to play single player games.

There are certainly some very stupid people on that site, but what I found most interesting was the extent to which Microsoft spies on people using Xbox Live. Everything from profile info to reading private messages sent between players.